Fables Come To Creighton
I returned from Georgetown to Creighton to be soon the chairman of the combined Departments of Classics and Modern Languages and to be the superior of the seminary which I had helped to found there twelve years earlier. This time brought an important turn in the road for the collection. It was clearly bursting the limits of a "personal" collection. Among the many questions raised by the burgeoning size of a collection in our old seminary building. Fire was one danger, but, as several "book people" warned me, the real enemy of books can be water. We faced the danger that a small fire in one part of the building would bring the fire department to douse the whole building! The deeper issue was that this collection belonged in a university or research library. Our Jesuit "province" offered it in the mid 90's to Creighton, and Creighton accepted happily and even began offering help in continuing to develop the collection. The University's magazine Window celebrated the gift as its cover story in the next issue.
Now there were external resources to keep the collection growing. That addition brought new changes and new adventures! Not only did Creighton support the collection's development, but also people more easily found the collection as something to which they might contribute.
A Prized Gift
Barbara Markuson of Glenwood, Iowa, was downsizing in August of 2010 and had a possession rich in history. Some years earlier, her husband Stanley, working Barbados, had seen there a Spode serving platter of considerable size, some 20" x 15", with a dramatic presentation of the fable "The Horse and the Loaded Ass." It was created in the 1830's as a part of a Spode series. He bought the platter and carried it in his lap on the plane ride back - because he knew that Barbara treasured beautiful things. The platter is done in the relatively rare black style. Now in 2010, as Barbara wondered to whom she might give this family heirloom, she found Creighton's fables website: www.creighton.edu/aesop. She called Michael LaCroix, the Director of Reinert Alumni Library, to ask "Is this Fr. Carlson person on the up-and-up?" Luckily, Director LaCroiz was sufficiently positive in his response that I was allowed to make contact with Mrs. Markuson and to drive to Glenwood to receive this large platter. It was a most pleasant exchange, but the longest walk I have ever taken was the fifty feet from her living room to my car! Though she wrapped the platter carefully, I was so afraid that I would fall or drop it! I was proud to include the platter in the Joslyn Museum exhibit of the collection, about which I report later.
Collector's Comment: I had been proud through the first ten or twleve years of the collection that I spent relatively little on the collection. I tried to use the amount that a professor might normally spend on professional books. In the 1991 catalogue, the average cost of a book was $7.50. By 1994, the average cost per book was $11.39. University financing opened up the possibility of adding to the collection significantly earlier and more expensive volumes.
Though the level of support has varied over the 25 years that it has belonged to Creighton, I am grateful for the University's generosity, as first though its presidents and more recently, as part of the Library's budget. These administrators have encouraged me to watch for bargains and go after them, and I enjoying negoatiating! A collector will always be facing questions of how much to invest in the collection. I am proud to have built a champagne-level collection on a beer budget!